HOW
BOOGIE WOOGIE BEGAN

In
1939, African American historian E. Simms Campbell wrote, “Boogie Woogie piano
playing originated in the lumber and turpentine camps of Texas and in the sporting
houses of that state.”

Campbell called Boogie Woogie power piano playing
“a fast, rolling bass, giving the piece an undercurrent of tremendous power."

Before and after 1900, East Texas was blanketed by vast virgin stands of longleaf
pines dotted with camps of men who spent most of their working hours harvesting
resin for the distillation of turpentine.

But at night and on weekends,
the camps were infamous for drunken brawls, card cheating, and murderous knife
fights. And, somehow, in the midst of this turbulence, a distinctly American form
of music, the Boogie Woogie, was developing. In the camps, there were always barrelhouses,
where barrels were made and filled with resin. On Saturday nights, planks of lumber
were placed across the barrels and became makeshift bars.

Consequently,
before Boogie Woogie began to make its way into music history, the style of piano
was also known as “barrelhouse piano.”

Dr. John Tennison of San Antonio,
founder of the Boogie Woogie Foundation, believes brothers Hersal and George W.
Thomas were responsible for bringing the Boogie Woogie style from such barrelhouses
in East Texas to Houston, and then to New Orleans and Chicago.

In Texas,
the term “Booger Rooger,” was used by blues guitarist Blind
Lemon Jefferson as early as 1917-18. However, the earliest evidence of “Boogie
Woogie” as a descriptor of piano music was in the 1923 reprinting of George Thomas’
“New Orleans Hop Scop Blues” in which Clarence Williams wrote that, while Boogie
Woogie originated in Texas, it wasn’t called that until after George Thomas heard,
further developed the style, and first published “New Orleans Hop Scop Blues”
in 1916.

Chester Norris of Broaddus, a former turpentine camp boss, called
turpentiners “the meanest people who ever lived.” He said, “They’d kill each other,
one or two every Saturday night. If they didn’t have gambling and a barrel house
to get drunk in, they’d move on to camps where they did have ‘em.”

Norris
said the black turpentine workers had a good feel for music. “They could beat
out music while they were putting the hoops on wooden staves,” he said.

Early
Boogie Woogie musicians were also inspired by the sounds of steam locomotives
rolling through the turpentine and lumber camps of East Texas.

In a 1988
British television broadcast about Boogie Woogie, music historian Paul Oliver
said: “...the conductors were used to the logging camp pianists clamoring aboard,
telling them a few stories, jumping off the train, getting into another logging
camp, and playing again for eight hours. In this way, the music got around, all
through Texas, and eventually...out of Texas.” Music historian Alan Lomax also
wrote in 1993: “Anonymous black musicians, longing to grab a train and ride away
from their troubles, incorporated the rhythms of the steam locomotive and the
moan of their whistles into the new dance music they were playing in jukes and
dance halls. Boogie Woogie forever changed piano players, as ham-handed black
piano players transformed the instrument into a polyrhythmic railroad train.”

John Tennison, meanwhile, wants to set the record straight on East Texas’ development
of the Boogie Woogie with a book he is writing.

All
Things HistoricalDecember
5, 2005 Column Published with permission (Distributed by the East Texas
Historical Association. Bob Bowman of Lufkin is a past president of the Association
and the author of more than 30 books about East Texas.) More
Music